I was sitting outside of Nordstrom in the Clackamas Town Center, chewing my cheese bagel, gossiping about coworkers and griping about a customer who wanted us to gift wrap eyeliner. Just then, a loud clap-clap echoed through the building. No one moved. No one reacted. I gleefully thought that someone had knocked over the onerous train on the lower level of the mall — the one I had to dodge while beelining to the bathroom when I took a break from my job at the makeup counter in Nordstrom.

Then six distinct claps echoed and were coming closer — someone was shooting a gun. Shoppers began running, chairs hit the ground. I stood up slowly. Looking around, I remember not really reacting the way I should. It was as if someone had told me there was a water balloon fight going on in the downstairs lobby. A voice came over the intercom announcing the obvious.

“There’s a gunman in the building,” the voice announced. “We’re on lockdown.”

People streamed into nearby stores as security gates were drawn down. Several customers and employees, including myself, headed into the back storage area of Nordstrom, waiting for the intercom to say something other than “There’s a shooter.”
Nordstrom’s security then led us into the café in the back of the store, where we would wait for the next three hours until police had swept the mall and assured the gunman was in custody — or dead. It’s funny the things a person remembers about a time like that. I wondered why, in all the chaos, I was still holding my empty coffee cup, not realizing it was in my hand until I felt the hot liquid on my skin.

It’s an obvious statement that we all come from different backgrounds. That day, in that room, none of that mattered — not politics or age or finances. We were all scared and angry. We all desperately wanted to go home.

Those shots didn’t sound like the ones from the movies when John Wayne chases the bad guy. It sounded like shattering glass. Other things are so loud, like the screaming voices and scrambling footsteps of people running. Confused children wondered why they had to go anywhere. The shots grew closer.

When Jacob Tyler Roberts walked into the Mall on Monday, Dec. 10, he carried a stolen semiautomatic AR–15 across his chest and wore a white hockey mask to hide his face. He walked into the JCPenny, past a family with young children and a Salvation Army Santa.

“I am the shooter,” he shouted when he reached the food court, according to the people who were there. Then he unloaded more than 40 rounds.

Steven Mathew Forsyth was 45; he worked at a kiosk and was from my hometown of West Linn.

Cindy Yullie was 54; she was finishing her Christmas shopping.

Both of them were killed.

Kristina Shevchenko was 15. The bullet that tore through her chest missed vital organs and her ribs, according to a post on her sister’s Facebook page.

Jacob Tyler Roberts was 22. And after he killed two grown-ups and shot one teenage girl, he turned the gun on himself.

I think about those people who tried to hide under chairs or tables. While inside the shuttered café, a little girl next to me asked her mom, “What’s going to happen to Santa?”

In the days following the shooting I sat curled on the couch with my little dog, Geffin, listening to press conferences and media analysis. Reporters described Roberts’ strained relationship with his aunt and lack of relationship with his mother. Friends talked about how his personality changed in early December. Everyone tried to make sense of something that made no sense.

Just five days later it was Friday and another young man 3,000 miles away in Connecticut shot his gun too, killing 20 children and 7 adults.

I never saw Roberts that day, but when I saw his picture on TV, it made my chest get tight and my stomach fill with an irrational fear that rose clear to my throat.